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480 pages, Paperback
First published September 3, 1991
What was not good enough was the usual form that mating takes. I had to realize that the male idea of successful love is to get a woman into a state of secure dependency which the male can renew by a touch or pat or gesture now and then while he reserves his major attention for his work in the world or the contemplation of the various forms of surrogate combat men find so transfixing. I had to realize that female-style love is servile and petitionary and moves in the direction of greater and greater displays of servility whose object is to elicit from the male partner a surplus--the word was emphasized in some way--of face-to-face attention. So on the distaff side the object is to reduce the quantity of servile display needed to keep the pacified state between the mates in being. (173)
Just then I was trying to see the relationship between Nelson's cynical observation that the meaning of life in every formulation seemed to reduce to finding or inventing a perfect will to be subject to, the relationship of that to scanting remarks about la femme moyenne sensuelle--which we agreed I was not, of course--finding her raison d'etre in the love of a male as close to alpha as she can get. (389)